Tag: Nikki Haley

A relatively quiet night, but one deserving of a roundup nonetheless.

North Carolina:

• NC-Sen (D): It’s been a long six weeks since the first round, where Elaine Marshall narrowly missed the threshold for a runoff by 4% with 36%. She picked up the endorsement of third-place finisher Ken Lewis (who scored 17%) in the meantime, countering the almost $200,000 put in on Cal Cunningham’s behalf by the DSCC. The DSCC’s efforts were again futile, with Marshall scoring a 60-40 victory. Given that Marshall won 57% of the head-to-head vote against Cuninngham in Round 1, this represents a 3% swing in her direction. DSCC Chair Bob Menendez put out a short statement in support of Marshall, who now goes on to face Richard Burr for the “cursed” seat that switches party every 6 years. (JMD)
• NC-08 (R): It looks like D’Annunziana Jones can spend more time busting the Ark of the Covenant out of Area 51. Ex-broadcaster Harold Johnson beat the enriched plutonium-level crazy Tim D’Annunzio by a 61-39 margin despite being badly out-spent. This one will probably end up being a real race this fall, despite D’Annunzio’s refusal to congratulate or endorse Johnson. (JL)

South Carolina:

• SC-Gov (R): Nikki Haley narrowly missed avoiding a runoff two weeks ago with 49%, but she sealed the deal with a convincing 65-35 victory over Gresham Barrett, who received 22%. Barrett’s dog-whistling attempts – referring to himself as a Christian family man who “won’t embarrass us” – didn’t seem to work, only carrying three counties within his district. The result falls surprisingly along the fault lines from the first round – AG Henry McMaster, who received 17% threw his support to Haley, while LG Andre Bauer threw his 12% to Barrett. Haley will now face Democratic State Senator Vincent Sheheen. (JMD)
• SC-01 (R): State Rep. Tim Scott is set to become the GOP’s first African-American congressman since J.C. Watts, much to the relief of John Boehner and Scott’s backers at the Club for Growth. Scott crushed attorney Paul Thurmond (the son of Strom) by a monstrous 68-32 margin, and faces a sub-par Democratic opponent in November. (JL)
• SC-03 (R): The Club for Growth had a much closer shave in this district, where their preferred candidate, state Rep. Jeff Duncan, only beat  the underfunded Richard Cash, an owner/operator of a fleet of ice cream trucks, by a 51-49 margin. Duncan will be the heavy favorite to win this 64% McCain in the general election. (JL)
• SC-04 (R): Wow, what a pathetic loss. Incumbent Rep. Bob Inglis barely moved the needle from his 28% primary performance, finishing the night with just 29% of the vote to Spartanburg County Solicitor Trey Gowdy’s whopping 71%. I wonder if we’ll ever see what Bob Inglis 3.0 looks like. (JL)

Utah:

• UT-Sen (R): Tim Bridgewater had a 57-43 advantage in the third round of balloting at Utah’s state GOP convention, but that didn’t hold over into the primary. Tim Bridgewater was viewed as the favorite and was up in the one public poll of the race (Mike Lee was up in his internals), but Lee (the son of Reagan’s solicitor general Rex) pulled out a narrow 51-49 victory over Bridgewater. Bridgewater had a narrow advantage along the heavily-populated Wasatch Front, but Lee more than offset this with his strength in Washington County (St. George) and the sparsely populated areas in between. (JMD)
• UT-02 (D): Democrats had worried about some GOP involvement to bounce the moderate (and more electable) Jim Matheson by pushing for liberal activist and school teacher Claudia Wright but Matheson cruised to a 68-32 victory. Wright had denied Matheson the outright nod at the Democratic convention – presumably due to his ‘no’ vote on HCR – netting 45% of delegates, but among the wider primary electorate, she didn’t fare as well. Matheson goes on to face former Southern SLCo State Rep. Morgan Philpot in his bid for a sixth term. (JMD)
  

Bonus Race: California!

• CA SD-15 (special): California’s 15th Senate district may get my vote for the nation’s most beautiful legislative district, but the results here weren’t too pretty. In a district that’s D+5 at the presidential level, Republican state Assembly minority leader Sam Blakeslee finished ahead of Democratic ex-Assemblyman John Laird, 50-41. However, California special election law requires one to break 50% to avoid a runoff, and Blakeslee’s 49.7% wasn’t enough. So, all four candidates (including a Libertarian and an indie) will do the exact same thing again on Aug. 17, although tonight’s results don’t bode well for Laird turning things around during the replay. (C)

• CT-Sen: You might recall that late last week Peter Schiff was looking unlikely to qualify for the ballot, not having enough signatures. Well, now it looks like he will qualify; I’m not sure whether the outcome was ever in doubt or he was gaming expectations. At any rate, he managed to get the signatures of 2% of all registered Republicans in the state, and the SoS announced his certification today. Also in the Nutmeg State, Joe Lieberman, who’d floated the idea of a Linda McMahon endorsement, now sounds like he’ll stay out of the Senate race entirely… given the choice between supporting arch-foe Richard Blumenthal or McMahon (who, given her unlikeliness of winning, isn’t a good use of political capital).

• IL-Sen: The optics on this just aren’t good for Mark Kirk: after an appearance at the Metropolitan Planning Council, Kirk literally ran out the door instead of taking questions from the media (who probably want to know about his military and teaching claims) and peeled out in his SUV. Alexi Giannoulias was also present; in a sign of how the worm has turned, instead of running out the door (as he probably would have several months ago) he lingered comfortably. Bad news on the cat fud front, though: Mike Niecestro, the rich guy who came out of nowhere last week to announce that he had 25,000 signatures and $1 million for an independent Senate bid to Kirk’s right, has had to back down. Turns out he didn’t have enough signatures after all. However, here’s some limited good news: Niecestro says he’s backing somebody by the name of Randy Stufflebeam, who’ll be running under the Constitution Party banner. Stufflebeam doesn’t seem to have Niecestro’s money, but he at least seems to have enough signatures to qualify. (Also on the filings front, pawnbroker-turned-LG-nominee-turned-laughingstock Scott Lee Cohen brought in 130K signatures for his independent IL-Gov bid, five times as many as he needs.)

• AL-Gov: The recount is over in Alabama, and as expected, Tim James’ $200K was very badly spent. The official tally: he now finished down by more than 200 votes, instead of the 167 he trailed by on Election Night. This means that Robert Bentley has clinched the slot in the GOP runoff against Bradley Byrne.

• IA-Gov: In what’s not a surprise, Terry Branstad has been on bended knee trying to get the backing of GOP primary rival Bob Vander Plaats, but it’s not going well. Vander Plaats reportedly requested the Lt. Governor spot, which Branstad isn’t going to do. However, this is a surprise to me: apparently Iowa doesn’t have a sore loser law, because now there’s talk of this leading to an independent run by Vander Plaats, which he’s now “seriously considering.” A kamikaze run by Vander Plaats that peels off 10% might actually give Chet Culver a route to staying in office.

• MI-Gov: Another EPIC-MRA poll of the Michigan governor’s race is out, this time only of the two primaries. On the Dem side, Andy Dillon has a 34-24 lead over Virg Bernero (leaving 42% undecided). On the GOP side, here’s a new development: Mike Cox is actually pulling into the lead, at 26. He leads Peter Hoekstra at 24, Rick Snyder at 20, Mike Bouchard at 16, and Tom George at 2, with 12 undecided. Is this just a blip, or is Cox really gaining some ground, having gotten some big conservative endorsements (Michigan Right to Life, the DeVos family) lately? Chances are it’s for real, now that there’s another round of attack ads out targeting Cox for allegedly helping cover up a party-out-of-bounds at then-Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s mansion. (The radio ad is paid for by the mysterious Foundation for a Secure and Prosperous America, which the Cox camp seems to think is linked to Snyder.)

• NV-Gov: The Hatch Act is an obscure little piece of legislation, although it’s at the core of what the GOP thinks is illegal about the PA-Sen/Co-Sen “jobsgate.” Well, it might just bite the Republicans in the butt, too: there are increasing questions over whether Brian Sandoval, who stepped down from the federal district court in order to run for Governor, engaged in politicking with still on the bench. The RGA’s Haley Barbour and Nick Ayers reportedly heavily recruited Sandoval into the race; considering how little time passed between his resignation and his entry into the race, some of that recruiting must have happened while son the bench.

• SC-Gov: Mitt Romney really, really wants to see Nikki Haley as Governor (probably because he’d like to have someone in charge of S. Carolina in 2012 who owes him a favor or three); he just gave $42K to Haley, who faces a GOP runoff tomorrow. (He was able to give that much, despite contribution limits, by harnessing six different PACs.) There have also been some eyebrows raised over a $2,000 consulting fee paid to Haley in 2008 by a construction firm, revealed when she disclosed her tax returns; it has a quid pro quo-ish whiff to it (the firm’s head said it was to pay for business leads and “help with things”), but isn’t likely to put a dent in the outcome of tomorrow’s runoff at this point.

• CO-04: Cory Gardner’s decision to bail on a fundraiser with unpalatable Iowa Rep. Steve King may hurt him more than if he’d actually gone through with it. King is still harping on Gardner’s lack of fortitude. King was joined on a conservative radio talk show in Colorado last Friday by ex-Rep. Tom Tancredo, who took turns tag-team insulting Gardner for an hour.

• ID-01: I don’t know how much weight to give this, but Rep. Mike Simpson (from the 2nd) is publicly saying it’s possible that Rep. Walt Minnick could play a role in voting in a different speaker than Nancy Pelosi, if the Dem majority is small enough after 2010 and whatever Blue Dogs are left hold the vote in the balance. Minnick, for his part, shrugged it off, although without a categorical denial, saying it’s “premature.” In a weird way, though, Simpson might be doing Minnick a favor here. Already a beneficiary of endorsement as the Tea Party Express’s token Democrat, this gives Minnick further cover to keep Dem leadership at arm’s length in the runup to November.

• NC-08: “I’d do everything the crazy guy would do; I just wouldn’t do it in a crazy way,” seems to be the argument here, which may not be the best electability argument. But that’s Harold Johnson’s way of framing tomorrow’s GOP runoff in the 8th, saying that he’d vote the “basically the same way” as Tim D’Annunzio.

CT-Sen: Despite having no shortage of cash, the Journal-Inquirer of north-central Connecticut says Paulist freakazoid Peter Schiff might be having trouble petitioning his way on to the ballot. What an ignominious end! Anyhow, we’ll know for sure by the end of this week. (Also, see our CT-04 bullet for another Nutmeg state petitioning debacle, only worse.) Meanwhile, Aaron Blake lays out some possible circumstances under which Rob Simmons’ zombie campaign might come back to life (though ultimately he thinks reanimation of this particular corpse is unlikely).

WI-Sen: I like what Russ Feingold is doing here: He’s putting his opponent, richie rich Ron Johnson, on the defensive by linking Johnson to Sharron Angle and Rand Paul, and charging that he hasn’t said whether he supports Social Security, Medicare, and the Civil Rights Act. Interestingly (at least according to Politico), Johnson’s spokesbot shot back with some pablum – and didn’t bother to say whether he does support any of these three pillars of modern society.

ME-Gov: An op-ed by George Smith in the Kennebec Journal suggests that environmental lawyer Eliot Cutler, running as an independent, could win Maine’s gubernatorial race. Cutler apparently has personal wealth, and Smith suggests he could split the GOP vote, earning the support of some of its more moderate members while the teabaggers stick with the very conservative Paul LePage. (And remember, Maine’s last governor before Dem John Baldacci was also an independent, Angus King.)

SC-Gov: So Politico has a piece claiming that the South Carolina GOP establishment, including the SC Chamber of Commerce, is going all-out to try to stop Nikki Haley from winning the run-off. But CNN notes that former First Lady Jenny Sanford is stumping for Haley, and of course third-place finisher and state AG Henry McMaster endorsed her as well.

AR-01: Dem Chad Causey is “in talks” about an endorsement with Tim Wooldridge, whom Causey beat 51-49 in the runoff.

AZ-08: Remember Randy Graf? If you don’t, all you need to know is that he craaazy. He also ran for this seat in 2006 and, after the NRCC abandoned him, got beat badly by now-Rep. Gabby Giffords. Anyhow, he endorsed veteran Jesse Kelly in the GOP primary, who was once touted but then got outshined by the later entrance of state Sen. Jonathan Paton.

CO-04: Man, I bet Cory Gardner really wishes Rep. Steve King would shut up. The other day, Gardner cancelled a fundraiser in Colorado with King after King declared that President Obama “favors the black person.” Now King is lambasting Gardner for spurning him – and claiming that Gardner agrees with what he said! Gardner of course disputes King’s claims. I don’t know if you can properly call this cat fud, but it sure smells like it.

CT-04: This sack is so very, very sad. Republican Tom Herrmann flushed his campaign down the toilet today like your kid’s dead goldfish, only there won’t be any trips to the pet store to buy a replacement. Turns out Herrmann’s campaign engaged in a little bit o’ ye olde petition fraud (something we mentioned the other day), meaning he won’t have enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. I admit that I was initially skeptical of this story, but it turned out that where there was smoke, there was indeed fire.

DE-AL: Republican Kevin Wade dropped out of the race, leaving Michele Rollins and Glen Urquhart to compete in the September primary. Wade endorsed neither, but touted Some Dude Rose Izzo.

LA-02: In a story about state Rep. Cedric Richmond formally kicking off his campaign, there’s a throwaway line suggesting that state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson is still considering a run. Carter Peterson (then known only as Karen Carter) lost badly to ex-Rep. Bill Jefferson in a 2006 run-off. She also infamously supported Republican Jim Tucker to be Speaker of the Louisiana House in 2007, over (of all people) Dem Don Cazayoux.

NC-08 (PDF): Damn, I hope PPP is wrong about this. They have Harold Johnson leading beautiful maniac Tim D’Annunzio 49-39 in the runoff (which takes place next week). Surely the Ark of the Covenant can help turn the tide for Timmy D, no?

ND-AL: Earl Pomeroy’s team did some nice work in getting a bullshit third-party ad yanked off the air. The spot accused Pomeroy of supporting healthcare taxes which led to lost jobs. The only problem(s): No new healthcare taxes have gone into effect yet, and the jobs in question related to reform of the student loan system, not healthcare. Yeah, whoops is right.

NY-13: Does the name Kieran Lalor ring a bell? He ran against Rep. John Hall in NY-19 in 2008 and got pasted. He’s resurfaced of late, but this time, he’s attacking a fellow Republican, Michael Allegretti. Lalor claims to represent a group of Iraq veterans, and he’s miffed that Allegretti has pictures of himself with members of the military on his website. Lalor’s hands are not exactly clean here, as his group’s own website has a picture of Allegretti’s opponent, Michael Grimm – whom Lalor says his organization will likely endorse.

NY-14: SEIU 32BJ, an important, 70,000-strong building workers union, endorsed Rep. Carolyn Maloney, citing her work in securing $4 billion in federal money for major east side transit projects.

PA-07: What a huge – and unforced – blunder. GOPer Pat Meehan tried to accuse Bryan Lentz of having been involved in the big “bonusgate” scandal (where Dem campaign workers were paid with state money). First problem: He had no such evidence, and the press (to their credit) had no trouble realizing this. Second mistake: He held his press conference in the state capitol – where the state legislature (of which Lentz is a member) is still in session. This meant that Lentz got to watch Meehan’s presser in person – and then when Meehan was done and the cameras were still rolling, Lentz strode up to the same podium and delivered a biting rebuttal to Meehan’s bullshit. Lentz’s impressive political skillz are matched only by Meehan’s lack thereof.

VA-05: Is there a word in English which expresses the idea that a debacle for one side is actually a boon for the other? No, it’s not schadenfreude, and it’s not crisitunity, either. But in any case, this is what seems to be brewing in VA-05, where the second-place finisher in the GO primary, Jim McKelvey, finally announced that he ain’t endorsing no one – at least, not yet. We can only hope he’ll give his backing to independent teabagger Jeffrey Clark rather than state Sen. Robert Hurt.

NRCC: The NRCC is setting a $20 million goal for its “Battleground” fundraising effort from members of its caucus. In 2008, their goal was $12 million, though it’s not clear whether they actually met it. In 2006, they started at $17.5 mil but later bumped it up to $22.5 mil.

• AR-Sen: Here’s a non-surprise. Americans for Job Security, who poured $1.8 million into anti-Bill Halter ads during the primary, say they probably aren’t going to be doing any further work on behalf of Blanche Lincoln. The anti-labor group already got what it wants (two anti-labor candidates), so its work is done. Also worth noting, Nate Silver points out what a tough lift a Bill Halter victory would have been, revealing something called the ‘blogginess’ index (a factor of being white, liberal, and college-educated), on which Arkansas scores very low and Pennsylvania scores pretty high (by way of explaining how Pennsylvania was more responsive to a labor/netroots primary challenge — although I’d point out that actual labor and netroots support wasn’t the main factor in pushing Joe Sestak past Arlen Specter, whereas it was the driving force in Halter’s bid). I’m not sure if he noticed or not, but the rank ordering of the states on that index is quite similar to the graph of most liberal-to-conservative Democratic electorates that Andrew Gelman introduced last week.

• CO-Sen: Jane Norton is making a rhetorical rush to the right, if her new advertising is any indication: it’s all about stopping “Obamacare” and “yanking it out by the roots,” and it’s playing mostly in the dark-red Colorado Springs market. Wondering why? She’s probably seeing the same thing in her polling as what Republican pollster Magellan (who are getting quite active in offering public polls of Republican primaries where they don’t have a horse in the race) is seeing. They have a poll out today showing Weld County DA Ken Buck leading Norton, 42-32.

• IL-Sen: Worse to worst for Mark Kirk? It looks like frustration with his constant politicizing of his military service was present even within the Department of Defense, as a DoD memo has surfaced that expressed “concerns arising from his partisan political activities during his last two tours of active duty.” Kirk was required to get a waiver before deploying to Afghanistan in 2008, which required him to write out “an acknowledgment of limitations required for all candidates on active duty.”

• NC-Sen: This is kind of an out-of-the-blue endorsement, but it may help Elaine Marshall gain a little traction with the national netroots. Ohio SoS Jennifer Brunner is apparently OK with endorsing outside her own state’s boundaries, as she offered her support to Marshall.

• NV-Sen: Echoes of Rand Paul’s still-in-progress post-primary makeover? Jon Ralston notices that Sharron Angle’s wacky website just got scrubbed, with no discussion of her positions at this point (no mention of Social Security elimination, for instance). Meanwhile, the GOP signals that they’re going to actively get involved in breaking out the message massage oil and work on rehabbing Angle: RNC head Michael Steele has pledged his support. RNC funds will go to the Nevada GOP rather than directly to Angle, whose campaign actually was in the red ($139K CoH, $179K debt) on May 19. (Compare that to Harry Reid’s $9.1 million.) And Angle’s reaching out to the GOP establishment, too, to the extent that she says she’s willing to accept campaign help from John Ensign, a flip-flop from her pre-primary position. Fitting, though, since she’s been a big proponent of embracing radioactive waste in Nevada. (And while I don’t ordinarily like to honk my own horn, after looking back through the SSP attic, I have to remind everybody that I forecasted an Angle primary victory back in October.)

• SC-Sen: There’s a growing sense that something’s amiss with Alvin Greene’s entry to the race, to the extent that Jim Clyburn explicitly called him a “plant” today and asked for a probe. The real puzzle is the timeline on Greene’s obscenity arrest, obtaining a public defender because of his indigence, and then his filing for the race:

The South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense, which operates the state’s public defender program, makes clear that courts take into account “the number of people in your household, whether you own any real estate, or have money in the bank” when deciding whether to assign a public defender to a defendant.

Greene has claimed that he paid the $10,400 filing fee out of his savings from his military pay. But he was discharged from the Army in August 2009 and says he hasn’t held a job since then.

So, in economic terms, the timeline goes like this: Greene’s military paychecks stopped in August. Three months later, he filed an affidavit with a South Carolina court claiming to be indigent. And four months after that he walked into the South Carolina Democratic Party headquarters with a personal check for $10,400.

Losing gubernatorial candidate Robert Ford (who’s African-American) also sheds some light on how Greene might have won despite his complete unknownness: apparently, in South Carolina, “Greene” (as opposed to “Green”) is understood to be an African-American last name. With South Carolina’s Democratic electorate with a black majority, voters with no other information about the two choices might vote based purely on that.

• UT-Sen: After previously having had some nice things to say about him, 4th place finisher Cherilyn Eagar went the whole way and endorsed Tim Bridgewater for the GOP Senate primary against Mike Lee.

• WI-Sen: Republican businessman Ron Johnson, who has some personal wealth to draw on in his bid against Russ Feingold, is launching his first television ads. A source tells SSP that this is a one-week statewide ad buy for about $350K.

• AL-Gov: Second-place finisher Robert Bentley is out with an internal poll (by Dresner Wicker) giving him a big lead in the runoff against Bradley Byrne, 45-29. That’s somewhat plausible, since Bentley seems likelier to consolidate the votes for the most conservative options, Roy Moore and Tim James, than is “moderate” Byrne. (Of course, since James is paying for a recount, it’s not a done deal that Bentley’s in the runoff.)

• CO-Gov: Scott McInnis, facing a primary from teabagger Dan Maes (who pulled even with him at the state convention), now says he “doesn’t remember” serving on the board of pro-choice group Republicans for Choice. However, paperwork filed with the FEC lists him on the group’s letterhead as a board member from 1996 to 2005… that’s ten years.

• SC-Gov: Nikki Haley is out with an internal poll giving her a big lead heading into the runoff against Gresham Barrett, 62-28 (suggesting she’s gotten the majority of the gains from the primary, where she led 49-22). Barrett‘s staying in (despite a sandbagging by the RGA), and he’s already out with a TV ad, where he appears with a drill sergeant who calls him “a Christian family man who won’t embarrass us.” I’m not sure if that cringeworthy line is supposed to be an anti-Mark Sanford dogwhistle or an anti-Haley dogwhistle; maybe it’s intended to do double-duty.

• GA-09: Despite losing the runoff in the special election in the 9th, Lee Hawkins is continuing to fight on; he’ll also challenge Rep.-elect Tom Graves in the regularly scheduled July primary. Hawkins didn’t fare as poorly as expected, staying within 56-44, and may be counting on the late-breaking news about Graves’s attempts to dodge a lawsuit over an unpaid business loan continuing to be a story in coming months.

• ID-01: Greg Smith & Associates released a poll (apparently not on any candidate’s behalf), showing Raul Labrador leading Democratic freshman Walt Minnick, 36-24. Recall, though, that this is the same pollster that found Minnick leading “the Republican” candidate 50-20 before the primary (and the link also helpfully provides a list of other times Smith has been way off the mark).

• VA-05: This should put to rest any notions that ex-Rep. Virgil Goode was considering a third-party independent teabagger-powered run in the 5th, or that he might throw his backing to one of the minor-league third-partiers running. Goode endorsed establishment Republican Rob Hurt to go against Rep. Tom Perriello.

AR-Sen: Mark Blumenthal has a detailed post-mortem of the polling in the Arkansas senate runoff, including some off-the-record claims that both Halter’s and Lincoln’s internal polling showed Lincoln ahead. I sort of wonder why Lincoln didn’t put out these numbers, if true.

CT-Sen: Several big-name Republican fundraisers are hosting an event for none other than Joe Lieberman, to benefit his 2012 re-election campaign. Some of the hosts include Robbie Aiken, Wayne Berman, Rachel Pearson, and Kathryn Rand. Obviously an outright party switch is always possible with this fuckin’ guy.

FL-Sen: Wow, so there really is a Democrat who wants death panels (more or less). Maurice Ferre, himself 75 years old, said in a meeting with the Palm Beach Post editorial board:

“Well, you know what, when you get to be 85 or 90 years old, you’re going to die. And I’m sorry, you call it, Sarah Palin, what you want, but the fact is that it is absurd for us to be spending the types of money we’re spending to extend life three months.”

Asked what he’d do as a Senator to control such costs, Ferre said: “I would absolutely say that this is the cap on how much is available for you to spend at age 90, 87, with a heart condition of this sort, with diabetes of this sort, two legs missing and, you know, this is how much is available for you to spend. And you spend it any way you want.”

There are other ways to lose races in Florida, but this is the simplest and most direct.

KY-Sen: Mitch McConnell’s sticking in his bite-guard and gritting his teeth hard to do a fundraiser for Roark Rand Paul later this month. Believe it or not, we happened to get the advance text of Paul’s prepared remarks for the event:

Throughout the ages, the finger painter, the Play-Doh sculptor, the Lincoln Logger stood alone against the daycare teacher of her time. She did not live to earn approval stamps. She lived for herself, that she might achieve things that are the glory of all humanity. These are my terms; I do not care to play by any others. And now, if the court will allow me, it’s naptime.

NV-Sen: The Big Dog is coming to the Silver State to do a campaign rally for Handsome Harry Reid next week – who won’t actually be there because the Senate will be in session. No word on whether a fundraiser is also on tap.

PA-Sen: Pat Toomey is taking some heat for a long-ago resume item: He used to work on Wall Street – in derivatives trading, no less.

SC-Sen: Alvin Greene, the mysterious Dem senate nominee in South Carolina, says he won’t drop out of the race, in spite of the state party’s call for him to bail in the wake of revelations that he was arrested on an obscenity charge last fall. Then again, Scott Lee Cohen said he wouldn’t bow out, either.

KS-Gov: Dem gubernatorial hopeful Tom Holland picked fellow state Sen. Kelly Kultala, considered something of a rising star in KS politics, as his running mate. The two formally kicked off their campaign yesterday.

NM-Gov, WI-07: In NM-Gov, we mentioned a little while back that Dem LG Diane Denish is hitting GOP nominee Susana Martinez’s record as a prosecutor in TV ads, specifically targeting her conviction rate. A related issue is coming up in WI-07, where Dems are charging ex-prosecutor Sean Duffy with misusing his (very recently) former office to compile conviction statistics helpful to his political campaign.

SC-Gov: Mitt Romney, who endorsed Nikki Haley back in March, is heading back down to the Palmetto state to campaign for her once more. Haley faces a runoff against Rep. Gresham Barrett on June 22nd.

AK-AL: Former communications exec Sheldon Fisher is running ads against his primary opponent, GOP Rep. Don Young, portraying himself as the “new conservative choice.” Kudos to the AP for reporting that the ad buy is $40,000 in size – not much by conventional standards, perhaps, but that money ought to go a lot further in Alaska.

IN-03: So this is pretty bizarre. Ex-Rep. Mark Souder, who recently resigned on account of having an extra-marital affair with a staffer, sent an odd message on Facebook concerning his likely successor, state Sen. Marlin Stutzman. On the one hand, he says Stutzman is “probably best qualified” to fill his spot. But then, explains the AP:

In one paragraph, he says Stutzman knew nothing of the affair and therefore couldn’t have tipped off the media. In another, he mentions that Stutzman or a political consulting firm leaked word of the affair to Fox News after getting information from the staffer’s husband, Brad Jackson a Kosciusko County commissioner.

Hmm, I thought it was Mike Pence who dimed out Souder?

MD-01: Businessman Rob Fisher is going up with an ad presenting himself as an outsider in the GOP primary. He faces the better-known state Sen. Andy Harris (the 2008 loser). BIG props to Ben Pershing at the Washington Post for nailing down these details: “The spot is running on cable stations in the Baltimore and Salisbury markets, with an initial buy of more than $70,000.”

MI-07, MI-09: President Obama did some fundraisers in Michigan earlier this week – one for the DNC, and another joint event for Reps. Gary Peters and Mark Schauer.

OH-18: Zack Space is doin’ it right: He’s launching a “six-figure” buy for an ad attacking GOP opponent Bob Gibbs as a tax-hiker and self-pay-raiser. Why do I like this move? Because Space is using his use cash edge ($1.3 mil to $0.1mil) to define Gibbs, at a time when Gibbs has only just emerged from the uncertainty of a primary recount (which he won with an absurdly pathetic 20.9%). For his part, Gibbs fired back with a popgun press release, the poor man’s television ad – very poor man’s.

VA-05: True to his word, Some Dude Jeff Clark is going ahead with his plans to run as a teabagging independent, since Rob Hurt won the GOP primary to take on Tom Perriello. In fact, Clark filed petitions with the board of elections last week. Note, though, something he hasn’t yet filed: an FEC report. Meanwhile, second-place finisher Jim McKelvey, who swore he wouldn’t support Hurt if he became the nominee, is still playing coy. Election night remarks suggested he was prepared to fall in line, but he hasn’t officially endorsed. (The other four also-rans have in fact done so.)

Polltopia: Taegan Goddard relays some blind non-quotes from random “pollsters” complaining about the alleged lack of transparency in Nate Silver’s pollster ratings – in particular, the fact that he hasn’t published his database of polls. Leaving aside the delicious irony that anonymous pollsters are complaining about transparency, I think this is a red herring. As Nate points out in a post of his own, anyone can recreate his work (with a lot of time and a little money) – and his main concern is the legal issues involved in making public a database that in part relies on information drawn from for-pay services.

• AR-Sen: As predicted, labor doesn’t look like it’s going to kiss and make up with Blanche Lincoln. The SEIU says it won’t back Lincoln in November, if nothing else, seeing as how they have races with better odds elsewhere that they need to deal with. PPP’s Tom Jensen reinforces that point in a piece entitled “Write Off Lincoln,” listing a handful of total sleeper races where the polls have been better for Dems than Arkansas.

• CT-Sen: Campaigns don’t usually release internal polls showing them down by 13 points, but when all the public pollsters are showing you down by more than 20 after your blockbuster move failed and it’s a last ditch effort to get contributors to not write you off, I suppose it makes sense. A Moore Information poll finds Linda McMahon trailing Richard Blumethal “only” 51-38.

• IL-Sen: Glad to see that the mainstream environmental groups are starting to see the big picture of how Washington works instead of reflexively endorsing moderate Republicans who occasionally pantomime throwing them a bone (see also Reichert, Dave). The Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters, who’ve backed Mark Kirk in the past in his House races, will be going with Alexi Giannoulias instead this year.

• NH-Sen: This seemed more like a cry for attention than a well-thought-out campaign pre-announcement when it happened last week. So it’s not surprising to hear that whistleblower/former state Securities chief Mark Connolly, after floating his name last week, has decided against running against Paul Hodes in the Dem Senate primary. (The same link also has a list of filings for New Hampshire’s state Senate… although Blue Hampshire has that data in helpful table form. Most notable: a troubling Dem-held open seat in a R+4 district.)

• SC-Sen: That didn’t take long at all, for the Democrats’ baffling new Senatorial nominee, Alvin Greene, to slide into Scott Lee Cohen territory. With revelations this morning that he’s facing felony obscenity charges, the state party is calling on Greene to drop out of the race. Mother Jones has some more detail on Greene that really plumbs the depths of his sheer unpreparedness for what he’s gotten himself into. I have no idea whether he’s a GOP plant (who got fronted the $10K filing fee to be a speed bump for Vic Rawl and wound up winning instead) or just a naif who accidentally wandered into the corridors of power, “Being There”-style, but either way, it makes for a great story.

• AL-Gov: It’s official; Robert Bentley finished in 2nd place in the GOP gubernatorial primary, earning him a spot in the primary, and, as expected, Tim James will file for a recount. AG Troy King just issued an AG opinion clarifying the whole issue of whether an automatic recount applies here: no, it doesn’t apply to primaries, so James is responsible for the cost of the recount himself. James still plans to do it, though, despite the cost of at least $300K.

• MI-Gov: Republican AG Mike Cox got endorsements from two key GOP power brokers: from the state Chamber of Commerce, and also from Dick and Betsy DeVos. I was a little surprised that the Grand Rapids-based Amway cult leaders didn’t go with their in-house western Michigan U.S. Rep., Pete Hoekstra, but Hoekstra claims not to be surprised, probably suggestive of some interpersonal tension with the DeVos family.

• MN-Gov: Here’s one more place the SEIU won’t get involved: the DFL gubernatorial primary in Minnesota. All three contenders seem to be friendly with labor, so the SEIU didn’t seem to want to play favorites in a field that’s basically a tossup.

• OR-Gov: Now this is odd… while Oregon has a rather New England-influenced politics, there’s no track record of quirky moderate independents running and winning there. Nevertheless, prominent local attorney John DiLorenzo is reporting a $150K loan from himself to his exploratory committee, in apparent preparation for a gubernatorial run.

• SC-Gov: I don’t think the RGA could tip its hand any further than it did last night, all but endorsing Nikki Haley, who still has to get past a runoff against Gresham Barrett, saying “the voters made a clear choice” and “the outcome is certain.” Barrett, for his part, is brushing that off and continuing to fight on.

• VT-Gov: You may remember Anthony Pollina, who ran as a Progressive and then independent in several gubernatorial races, going as far as to finish 2nd in 2008. Good news for Vermont Dems: Pollina isn’t making a third-party bid, or even running for governor at all this year; instead, he’s running for a state Senate seat. Also, it sounds like the local Dems and Progressives are getting smarter about not canceling each other out, as they plan to avail themselves more of “fusion voting” this year. (H/t terje; the whole comment is well worth a read.)

• AR-01: With the ink barely dry on Chad Causey’s victory in the Dem runoff, the Rick Crawford campaign released an internal poll showing them with a lead over Causey. The poll by POS gives the GOP nominee a 40-34 lead. While the district has a strong Dem tradition, Obama’s 54% disapproval in the district gives Crawford an opening.

• IN-03: There’s a tally of 15 different Republicans seeking the GOP nod for the special election to replace the recently-resigned Mark Souder; the local GOP will meet on Saturday to choose somebody. The most prominent name is state Sen. Marlin Stutzman, who recently lost the IN-Sen primary, but the list also includes IN-03 primary loser Bob Thomas, two state Reps., Randy Borror and Wes Culver, and even a local TV anchor, Ryan Elijah.

• IN-09: Biden alert! The fundraiser-in-chief has added Baron Hill to his list of beneficiaries, and will be appearing on his behalf in Jeffersonville on June 28.

• PA-12: For his rematch against now-Rep. Mark Critz, Tim Burns is going to try a different campaign manager. Having lost by 9 in the special after seeming to lose the ground war, he parted ways with former chief Tadd Rupp.

• NRSC: John Cornyn admits that the NRSC’s wide playing field this November isn’t all good news, because their limited resources (currently $17.1 million) will be stretched thin. Somewhere Dino Rossi is thinking “Now he tells me…”

• Polltopia: Maybe the biggest story that people are following today is the quick decision, in the wake of the AR-Sen runoff polls (as well as MA-Sen, PA-12, and the AL-Gov D primary…), by Daily Kos to part ways with hired pollster Research 2000. However, Markos says the decision was more based on 538’s aggregate pollster ratings than any one poll. There’s no word yet on which pollster will be wearing the orange in the future. Mark Blumenthal has more on the decision, including R2K head Del Ali’s response.

DE-Sen: Biden alert? Dem senate candidate Chris Coons says a Biden fundraiser is “in the works.” I sure hope so! I think Coons is a sleeper candidate, and it would be ridic for Biden not to help a fellow Dem out in his own state (which is just outside of DC, anyhow).

NV-Sen: It may be too late to save her fricasseed campaign, but Sue Lowden has an over-the-top ad out hitting Sharron Angle for her support of a Scientology-backed plan to offer massage therapy to recovering drug addicts. Be sure to check out the cameo of a certain couch-jumping Top Gun star at about 20 seconds in.

NY-Sen-B: So as you know if you’re a faithful SSP reader, the state GOP put two dudes on their ballot line for the September primary: Bruce Blakeman and David Malpass. They did not include ex-Rep. Joe DioGuardi, but (and this is a big “but,” DioGuardi did score the Conservative Party’s ballot line all to himself. Though DioGuardi says he’ll try to petition his way on to the GOP ballot, Republicans don’t seem to have a lot of faith in him becoming their nominee, and they want to avoid a split ticket. So Conservative chair Mike Long got a bunch of calls asking him to bounce DioGuardi from his party’s line, but he refused, pointing out that DioGuardi got 70% of the vote at the Conservative convention. Ah, the New York GOP – still a train wreck.

ID-Gov: The Idaho Statesman has a pretty good profile on Dem gubernatorial nominee Keith Allred, who is running a surprisingly vigorous (and decently-funded) campaign against the not-so-hot incumbent Butch Otter. The most interesting detail is the fact that the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, a chamber-of-commerce-type big business lobby, is already attacking Allred – not something you usually bother doing with an un-serious candidate.

SC-Gov: Rudy Giuliani jumped in with a last-minute endorsement of AG Henry McMaster yesterday – though note that the unlovable loser finished sixth in the South Carolina primary in 2008. (Though Joe Lieberman reassured him that it was actually an eleventy-way tie for fifth.) And in a seriously weird last-minute desperation move, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer released, uh, well… you’d expect me to say “released a poll,” right? Nope – he released the results of a polygraph test (!), which he claims show he had no involvement in the various Nikki Haley affair allegations. Talk about protesting a wee bit too much, huh?

AL-05: A douchey move from a douchey guy: Bud Cramer, the Democrat who held this seat before giving way to Parker Griffith, is not “ready to endorse any candidate for Congress” – even though, you know, we have a nominee (Steve Raby). Cramer actually pulled this same shit last cycle after he announced his retirement, dithering for several weeks before finally endorsing Griffith. Back then, Cramer suggested he might endorse a Republican – and I guess he finally got his wish when Griffith switched parties. Jesus, though – do the right thing already.

FL-24: Former Winter Park Commissioner Karen Diebel scored an endorsement from Mike Huckabee in her bid to become the GOP nominee against Rep. Suzanne Kosmas.

MA-10: Republican Jeffrey Perry has been under fire for his oversight of a police officer under his command while Perry was a police sergeant in the early 1990s. The officer, Scott Flanagan, was ultimately fired and pled guilty for illegal strip-searching a 16-year-old girl. Now, the Cape Cod Times reports that Perry’s own accounts of the incident and its aftermath are contradicted by police records from the time. In an earlier interview, Perry suggested that he had acted with alacrity in handling the situation, but now it appears he waited 24 hours to write up the officer, and almost a week to take a statement from a witness to the search.

NC-08: Heh, he actually went ahead and did it. Weapons-grade wingnut Tim D’Annunzio launched a defamation suit against his runoff opponent, Harold Johnson, for a “radio ad targeting D’Annunzio for his ‘life of drugs, crime and time served in prison’ and for supposedly failing to pay an employer payroll tax, having tax liens, and withholding child support.” D’Annunzio had previously threatened to sue the chair of the NC GOP, but this is so much more fun.

NY-13: Rep. Mike McMahon scored the endorsement of the Independence Party, which means he’ll have their ballot line in November (something he didn’t have last cycle). And while he won’t get the support Working Families Party thanks to his “no” vote on healthcare, the WFP isn’t expected to nominate any kind of challenger, so their line will likely remain blank in this race – thus avoiding a split of the left-leaning vote. A Dem primary challenge at this point also looks remote. Meanwhile, McMahon raised $140K at a fundraiser hosted by none other than Mike Bloomberg. He was also expected to take in some $90K at an Anthony Weiner event, which was also slated to feature Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, a Conservative.

NY-29: Judge David Larimer of the Western District of New York ruled against Republicans who were seeking to force Gov. David Paterson to call the special election for this vacant seat earlier than November, saying Paterson was empowered to call it for the fall. An appeal to the Second Circuit is possible, but no word yet on whether one is planned.

VA-11: This seems really lame.

CA-SoS: I guess maybe we were too busy laughing when we first heard stories that Orly Taitz was running for California Secretary of State to bother writing it up… but not only is she on the ballot, the CA GOP is worried she might win the primary! She’s running against Damon Dunn, another ex-NFLer (what is with those guys running for office this year?), but Dunn’s deliberately ignored her rather than attack. The Republicans have little chance against Dem incumbent Debra Bowen, but Orly as their nominee would be a nice, months-long goiter for them to deal with.

Blue Dogs: I think I agree with everything Chris Bowers says in this post.

Games: Several folks in comments were recommending a new game called Congress Forever the other day, where you battle for control of the House and Senate. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks like the perfect nerd timewaster.

Polling: Nate Silver just released the latest version of his pollster ratings, which analyzes a truly massive data set of “4,670 distinct polls from 264 distinct pollsters covering 869 distinct electoral contests” going all the way back to 1998. He lays out his methodology in a separate post, which is a must-read. Also, that gang of polling maniacs over at PPP are soliciting your votes again: The choices this time are LA, MA, PA, WA or WI.

Redistricting: Politico has a piece out which claims that Republicans are lagging in the race to raise money and set up legal groups to wage the coming round of redistricting battles. I’m a little skeptical, because the article says that Republicans are hurting thanks to a lack of soft money in the post-McCain Feingold world – but if anything, Dems were known as the party most dependent on soft money before campaign finance reform passed. Still, P’Co suggests that Dems are more organized because of some top-down control being exercised by the Obama political operation.

Public Policy Polling (6/5-6, likely voters, 5/22-23 in parens):

Nikki Haley (R): 43 (39)

Henry McMaster (R): 16 (18)

Gresham Barrett (R): 23 (16)

Andre Bauer (R): 12 (13)

Undecided: 7 (14)

(MoE: ±3.1%)

Runoffs:

Nikki Haley (R): 51

Gresham Barrett (R): 35

Undecided: 14

Nikki Haley (R): 62

Andre Bauer (R): 26

Undecided: 12

Nikki Haley (R): 54

Henry McMaster (R): 35

Undecided: 12

(MoE: ±3.1%)

It looks like Haley’s standing has not been impaired by the allegations of extramarital infidelity that have dominated the headlines this week. Her favorable rating among Republican primary voters sits at 58-23, an improvement over the 42-13 rating she had in late May. Moreover, by a 54-13 margin, Republicans don’t believe the allegations are true, and are split almost evenly on whether she should drop out of the race if the allegations are proven true.

We should also give thanks to PPP for taking a look at the 4th CD primary, where conservative GOP incumbent Bob Inglis is being teabagged to death:

Bob Inglis (R-inc): 33

Trey Gowdy (R): 37

Jim Lee (R): 9

David Thomas (R): 9

Christina Jeffrey (R): 5

Undecided: 7

(MoE: ±5.7%)

Despite a thoroughly conservative voting record, Inglis has committed a long list of verbal apostasies against the Glenn Beck wing of the Republican Party, and it seems that his occasionally moderate-sounding style is costing him big time among his party’s base. I think it’s worth revisiting one of the most astute pieces of analysis I’ve ever read on SSP, from a post by DavidNYC predicting Parker Griffith’s demise back in December:

It’s important to remember that to remain a member in good standing of the conservative movement, it isn’t enough just to vote a certain way. You have to evidence a very particular tribal belonging – you need to hate the right people, be ignorant of the right facts, be fearful of the right bogeymen, and be arrogant about the whole enterprise. If you somehow fail this tribal litmus test, it doesn’t matter how right-wing you are – that’s how, for example, a wildly conservative guy like former Rep. Chris Cannon could lose a primary to another wildly conservative maniac.

Note: This digest was written entirely by DavidNYC.

AR-Sen: SEIU has a new ad out hitting Lincoln for her TARP vote and for her disloyalty during the health care debate. Props to CQ’s Matthew Murray for trying to nail down the size of the buy from SEIU, which would only say that the run is “comprehensive.” SEIU has gone pretty large in this race from day one, so they probably aren’t going cheap on us now.

CA-Sen: Carly Fiorina, in a move which will no doubt endear her to the teabaggers but embarrass her in the eyes of the state of California, has taken to decrying concerns about climate change as “worrying about the weather” in a new ad.

CO-Sen: I Do. Not. Care. about this stupid non-story. Why are journalists so damn breathless about crap like this? It’s like they’ve never heard of politics.

NV-Sen: According to an analysis by the WaPo, Chicken Lady may have spent $100K on her primary out of funds that were designated for the general election only. Lowden bought $220K worth of ad time, but had only about $100K of primary money (mostly a loan from herself) on hand, so that extra hundred grand had to come from somewhere. God, you know, I just can’t decide whom I’d rather face more: this crazy lady, or the other crazy lady. Harry Reid, you are one lucky dude. Just pray Danny Tarkanian doesn’t pull an Alice Kryzan/Creigh Deeds.

NV-Gov: A district court judge enjoined a shadowy conservative group, Alliance for America’s Future, from running ads until it registers with the Secretary of State, saying that voters have the right to know who is behind political advertising. The group, which has ties to Dick Cheney, had planned to spend $250K on behalf of GOPer Brian Sandoval.

SC-Gov: I don’t care about this story, either.

AR-02: In the AR-02 runoff, state House Speaker Robbie Wills, a white male, has been arguing that he’s “more electable” than state Senate Majority Leader Joyce Elliott, who is black and a woman. The chair of the Arkansas NAACP sees that a “code word for racism.” Wills responded by saying that Elliott has “extreme views” which are out of step with the district. I hope this primary doesn’t get much uglier, because words like that will be used by Republicans against whomever our nominee is.

CA-19: Dick Pombo is trying to win a GOP primary by reminding voters that he’s a longtime creature of Washington, DC. No wonder he lost.

ID-01: Dear Vaughn Ward: socks before shoes. Also, hire publicists to get your side of the story out before election day, not after. Actually, no – we love you, don’t change a thing!

MI-08: This is unfortunate. Kande Ngalamulume, the only Democrat running against GOP Rep. Mike Rogers, is dropping out of the race, just three weeks after formally announcing his candidacy. Though Ngalamulume hadn’t filed any FEC reports, Obama actually won this district 53-46 (a major swing from Bush’s 54-45 win over Kerry), and even being able to pin Rogers down just a bit would have been helpful. Michigan’s filing deadline was May 11th, and I’m not sure if local Dems can nominate a replacement.

NH-02: Some Teabagger Andrew Hemingway says he won’t get into the GOP primary in NH-02. Meh.

NY-13: It’s always confusing in NY-13, but here’s the deal: The state Conservative Party has given its backing to GOPer Michael Grimm, who was also endorsed by the Brooklyn wing of the party – even though the Staten Island Cons  recently got behind Dem Rep. Mike McMahon. (Party chair Mike Long wasn’t going to let McMahon get their nod, though.) To make things even more complicated, the SI Republican Party endorsed Grimm’s primary opponent, Michael Allegretti, as we mentioned last week, and the Brooklyn GOP did as well the week before. But Grimm has at least one big player on his side: Rudy Giuliani, who did a fundraiser for him earlier this week. Anyhow, I’m sure you can sniff the cat fud: Grimm has already locked up the Conservative line, but Allegretti could definitely win the Republican primary. There’s already a lot of bad blood between the two Republican Mikes, which means we could see something of an NY-23 redux here.

NY-18: Biden Alert! The VPOTUS squeezed in a fundraiser yesterday for… Nita Lowey? She has over $1.1 million on hand, and I’m not aware of any meaningful Republican challenger in this race. (Obama/Kerry: 62/58.) So what gives?

OK-02: This is interesting: Democratic state Sen. Jim Wilson says he’s going to launch a primary challenge to conservative Rep. Dan Boren. Wilson specifically cited Boren’s opposition to the healthcare reform bill in launching his campaign. The primary here is pretty soon, July 27th, though there’s also a run-off on August 24th. However, as of now, there are only two candidates in the race.

TN-08: The internal warfare continues in the GOP primary to replace retiring Rep. John Tanner. Though the NRCC is still touting agribusiness kingpin Stephen Fincher, ex-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott is doing a fundraiser for Shelby County Commissioner George Flinn. An establishment divided against itself… yields to a teabagger?

WI-07: Hah! We mentioned the other day that establishment efforts to clear the primary field for Dem Julie Lassa hit a snag when Some Dude Joe Reasbeck said he was going to run. Well, turns out he’s run for office before: as a write-in (wait, there’s more) in Texas (heh, there’s still more) as a Republican (not done yet), earning 89 votes. Hold on, hold on – more! Who was he running against? Well, only the most famous write-in candidate of all time, Snelly Gibbr! Shit like this is why I love politics.

• CA-Sen: For a brief shining moment there, Tom Campbell had some good news: in the April 1-May 19 reporting period, Campbell actually outraised Carly Fiorina from outside donors. Campbell pulled in $990K while Fiorina got $909K. Fiorina’s response? She wrote herself another seven-figure check.

• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist’s 7-word-long Google ad attacking Jeff Greene (almost haiku-like in its simplicity: “What has Jeff Greene done? Experience matters.”) prompted a 300-word press release from the Greene camp landing some solid hits on Crist.

• KY-Sen: In terms of rocking the political boat, this probably isn’t as eye-opening as his comments about the Civil Rights Act or the NAFTA Superhighway, but it’s one more weird, sketchy act by Rand Paul: in 1999, he created a whole new certifying body for ophthalmologists, the National Board of Ophthalmology, in order to compete with the establishment American Board of Ophthalmology. The NBO has looser certification requirements than the ABO.

• NH-Sen (pdf): Republican pollster Magellan has been really active lately in GOP primaries where they don’t have any skin in the game; they’re back to looking at the New Hampshire Senate race. They find the real race here between Kelly Ayotte, at 38, and Bill Binnie, at 29. Ovide Lamontagne is lagging at 9, with Jim Bender at 4.

• OH-Sen, OH-Gov (pdf): The Ohio Poll, conducted by the University of Cincinnati, is out today with pleasant results for Democrats (perhaps doubly so, considering they have a reputation for producing GOP-leaning results). They find Dem Lee Fisher with a one-point lead over GOPer Rob Portman in the Senate race, 47-46. They also find incumbent Dem Ted Strickland looking OK in the gubernatorial race, leading John Kasich 49-44 (and sporting a surprisingly high 55/35 approval, suggesting that whatever he’s been doing lately has been working).

• FL-Gov: Ad wars are reaching a fever pitch in the GOP primary in the Florida gubernatorial race; Rick Scott placed a sixth major media buy for another $2.9 million, taking his total to $10.9 million. We’ve also found out more about that mystery group that’s planning to spend nearly a million hitting Scott (primarily on the issue of the fraud charges against his company): it’s the Alliance for America’s Future. While it’s not clear what their interest in Bill McCollum is, the group is headed by Mary Cheney (daughter of Dick).

• HI-Gov: After many months of operating in running-but-not-running limbo, Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann made it official yesterday: he’ll run in the Democratic gubernatorial primary against ex-Rep. Neil Abercrombie.

• NM-Gov: Former state GOP chair Allen Weh, who’s turned into the main GOP primary opposition to Susana Martinez by virtue of his money, just loaned himself another $600K for the home stretch, on top of $1 million he’s already contributed. Lt. Gov. Diane Denish is unopposed in the Dem primary, but watching Martinez catch up to her in polls of the general, has launched into a fundraising frenzy as of late; she’s raised $464K from donors in the last three weeks.

• SC-Gov (pdf): Two different polls are out in South Carolina: one, from Insider Advantage, continues the trend of giving an advantage to Nikki Haley (and the survey period was May 25, after the current imbroglio broke). Haley is at 31, Andre Bauer at 21, Gresham Barrett at 14, and Henry McMaster at 13. On the Dem side, Vince Sheheen leads at 26, with Jim Rex at 17 and Robert Ford at 12. SCIndex didn’t look at the primaries, but had some rather heartening numbers for November: Generic Republican leads Generic Dem only 46-44 in the gubernatorial race, while in the Senate race, Jim DeMint leads Democratic challenge Vic Rawl only 50-43.

• IN-03: Mitch Daniels made it official today, setting the date for the special election to replace resigned Mark Souder on Nov. 2, at the same time as the general election. (So the special election’s winner will only serve during the House’s lame duck session.) The state GOP will pick its candidates for both elections at a June 12 caucus; presumably, they’ll choose the same person for both.

• MO-08: Where’s the New York Times when you need them? Rep. Jo Ann Emerson just lied big-time about her Dem opponent Tommy Sowers’ military record, saying that her opposition to DADT repeal was based on talking to actual commanders, as opposed to Sowers, who “never commanded anybody.” Um, yeah… except for that platoon of combat engineers that Sowers led in Kosovo.

• MS-01: Wow, even Mississippi Dems are now taking a page from the Gray Davis playbook. A Dem 527 called “Citizens for Security and Strength” is hitting presumed Republican frontrunner state Sen. Alan Nunnelee prior to the primary as a “hypocrite on taxes.” Apparently they too are sensing some late-game momentum by Henry Ross, a teabagger whom they’d much rather Travis Childers face in the general than financially-flush establishment figure Nunnelee, and would like to facilitate a Ross victory (or at least a runoff).

• NC-08: Thinking that Barack Obama is a Kenyan secret Muslim? Check. Wanting to repeal the 17th Amendment? Great! Thinking that there’s a 1,000-foot-high pyramid in Greenland? Sorry, that’s a fridge too far even for the teabaggers of North Carolina. Six leaders among the local Tea Partiers publicly switched their allegiances to Harold Johnson in the runoff in the 8th, following revelations of just how off-the-rails their one-time fave Tim d’Annunzio is.

• NY-23: Determined to relive the NY-23 special election over and over again, the Concerned Women of America are sticking with their endorsement of Doug Hoffman, who seems on track to pick up the Conservative Party line while the GOP line goes elsewhere (like Matt Doheny, most likely).

• Votes: The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell cleared the House by a 234-194 margin yesterday, with 5 GOPers voting yes and 26 Dems voting no. The GOP ‘ayes’ were Judy Biggert, Joe Cao, Charles Djou (in his first week of work), Ron Paul, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Dem no votes were — no surprise — mostly vulnerable members in culturally conservative areas: Berry, Bishop (GA), Boucher, Bright, Carney, Childers, Costello, Critz, Davis (TN), Donnelly, Edwards (TX), Etheridge, Green (TX), Lipinski, Marshall, McIntyre, Ortiz,  Peterson, Pomeroy, Rahall, Ross, Shuler, Skelton, Spratt, Tanner, and Taylor.

• Polltopia: Somebody must have slipped some Red Bull into Nate Silver’s Ovaltine lately, as he’s just landed his third hard hit on Rasmussen in as many days. Today, it’s their Wisconsin Senate race poll showing the unknown Ron Johnson competitive (and known by 68% of likely voters) that’s drawing Nate’s ire.